Following a gentleman's expedition: Odobescu and the crypts from northern Buzău

Abstract

Subsequent to the period in which he became interested in the Buzău district and a short time after receiving the first answers to his archaeological questionnaire, Romanian writer and archaeologist Alexandru Odobescu made a remarkable discovery. The information he gathered led to the identification of a remote area in northern Buzău, Romania, marked by the existence of a large number of mysterious caves, tombs, and rooms carved in stone. He referred to them as crypts, and carefully planned an expedition in the Alunişu – Nuc area.

Although Odobescu, helped by the Swiss painter Henri Trenk, conducted field research in 1871, he never published his findings or drew conclusions regarding the origin of the crypts, thus his manuscripts remained forgotten in the Romanian Academy archives. This paper aims to rediscover a part of Odobescu's unfinished research through the creation of a map which helps us understand the geographical space within which he made his discoveries at the end of the nineteenth century.

Keywords:

• Alexandru Odobescu
• crypts
• tomb
• Buzău, historical geography
• archaeology
• Romania

1. Introduction

In 1870, Alexandru Odobescu, renowned Romanian author and archaeologist, created the ‘Cestionariu’, an archaeological questionnaire that was quickly approved by the Ministry of Public Instruction and sent to teachers across the country beginning early in 1871. The teachers were asked to answer a series of questions related to the existence of monasteries, ancient monuments, ruins and local traditions across each commune.

The answers from the Buzău district were among the first ones to arrive (Odobescu, 1908). Based on these answers, Odobescu outlined four expeditions (that he named ‘excursiuni’) grouped under the name ‘Proiectu de companie pentru exploraţiuni arheologice în districtul Buzău în vara anului 1871’ (Campaign project for archaeological explorations in the Buzău district in the summer of 1871) (Chihaia, 1974). We do not know for certain whether Odobescu managed to fully realise any of the four travels. However, documentary evidence indicates that the only expedition which definitely took place was the one in the area of Colţi and Bozioru, to study a vast network of mysterious caves, tombs, and rooms carved in stone. He called them ‘crypte’ (crypts), since one of the teachers used this term in his answer to the questionnaire. Odobescu travelled along with his friend, the Swiss painter Henri Trenk. The notes taken there, as well as Odobescu's sketches have never been published, leaving all of his findings unknown until over 100 years later (Chihaia, 1995).

This paper has three objectives. Firstly, to illustrate Odobescu's expedition by creating a map based on his field notes. Secondly, to roughly define the area in which he found crypts. Thirdly, to act as a support for later, more detailed studies of historical geography, history and archaeology of the crypts and caves.

2. Methods

2.1. Study area

The Buzău district (or county) is located in the northeastern part of Muntenia, Romania. In his Campaign project, Odobescu wrote about an expedition to ‘Valea Buzăului, în munţi, cu afluenţii săi, Lunca frumoasă şi Bâscele’ (Buzău valley, in the mountains, with its tributaries, Lunca frumoasă and the two Bâsca rivers) (Chihaia, 1974). Actually, the area he investigated was much smaller. The crypts he found are located east of the Buzău River, near the Pătârlagele depression, at the foothills of the Ivăneţu Mountains.

2.2. Quantitative data

To create the roads, rivers and settlement layers for the map, vector data were extracted from topographic maps published in 1981 (Rotaru, Anculete, & Paraschiva, 1989). These maps are the most accurate produced prior to the road modernisation and village desertion that took place in the 1990s. Three sheets (L-35-89-D-b, L-35-89-D-c, L-35-89-D-d) were scanned at a 300 dpi resolution and georeferenced using the Stereographic 70 projection. The point locations of the existing crypt sites, as well as those of village churches and monasteries were collected using a Garmin GPSMAP 60CS× GPS receiver during several field campaigns between April 2010 and August 2011. The crypts which could not been located were roughly marked using information from the answers to the questionnaire.

2.3. Qualitative data

The map shows the area explored by Odobescu and Trenk in 1871, while they were searching for the crypts (Chihaia, 1973). Unlike any of his previous journeys, Odobescu did not keep a diary, so his exact routes and camping sites could not be accurately established. I agree, however, with Ştefan (1979) that Nuc village could have been the starting point of Odobescu's daily routes due to its central position relative to the crypts.

Odobescu did not carry out archival research and for this reason, throughout his notes and sketches, the crypts are distinguished only numerically (crypt no.1, crypt no.2, etc). His field notes, together with Trenk's watercolours were used to summarise the sites visited and studied by them.

Not all of the crypts that Odobescu discovered based on the questionnaire were visited by him in 1871. To illustrate this, I created an Euler diagram attached to the upper right corner of the map, which highlights the visited crypts as a subset of the known ones. For the crypts which had not been visited, I included textual information taken directly from the answers to the questionnaire. The only exception is ‘Odaia de la Borduşoi’, which although visited by Odobescu, is reported to have disappeared as early as 1980 (Ştefan & Drâmbocianu, 1980) and I consider any information regarding it as extremely valuable.

For a better understanding of the map, I use the current names for the crypts, instead of Odobescu's numerical denominations. Also, for the settlement names, I use the spelling that was in use at the end of the nineteenth century.

3. Discussion and conclusions

The associated map illustrates Odobescu's unpublished archives. This reconstruction from his 1871 expedition clearly shows that the area of the crypts (or rock-hewn vestiges, as they are called today) extends to the west of the Alunişu – Nuc central core area. Previous studies only identified vestiges in the central core. Since the ones at Alunişu and Nuc appear strongly related to a former monastic centre, it remains to be seen if the three western vestiges Gaura Tătarilor, Odaia de la Borduşoi and Peştera de la Vârful Cămăruţei, about 4–5 km southwest of the Alunişu – Nuc central core, could have also been related to former hermitages or monk cells.

Apart from the vestiges, Trenk's watercolours show that they also visited the St. George and Găvanele monasteries. This indicates that Odobescu could have linked these with the crypts, but that interpretation is not found in his unpublished notes.

Further research regarding the historical geography and toponymy of the region's vestiges and settlements is presently undergoing.

Software

Data processing was conducted using ESRI ArcGIS 9.3. Further cartographic work was done using Adobe Illustrator CS4 with Avenza MAPublisher 8.2 extension and Adobe Photoshop CS3. GPS data were imported and converted using Mapsource 6.15.11 software.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Lecturer Ionuţ Săvulescu, Professor Bogdan Mihai, Sebastian Matei, Ciprian Chiriac and Filofteia Rotaru for their support with this work. This research has been funded through a Scientific Scholarship from the University of Bucharest.